“Jackman and the hound?”
“That’s what they’re calling what happened.”
“Sounds like a band’s name.”
“People are leaving flowers and candles at Mother’s front door. I passed by and saw crucifixes hanging on her doorknob.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“No, but it sounds like she’s changing her tune, telling people her doorway is a sign that the Lord has opened the gates of heaven and sending down his angels of salvation.”
I mumbled to all my immortal acquaintances, dream walkers, and the Shadow Creature, “This is getting ridiculous,” then asked Valentine what she thought was going on.
She sat next to me. “How’s your hand?” She touched it gingerly. “We haven’t done a thorough treatment since the blisters went down.”
“I’ve been on it, Valentine. Fingers seem useless though.”
“They look stiff.” She rubbed her hand slowly up my forearm. “I’ve been living here for three weeks now, and I don’t see no holy man. You’re a nice guy. What would I have done without you? But you don’t go to church, don’t talk religion, don’t preach or lecture. You just let people be. If you’ve the power to heal, and I’ve seen that you do in a miraculous way, why don’t you use it?”
“I don’t know how to bring it forth at will. It’s just happened a few times and never quite so dramatic.”
“Dramatic. You call that dramatic. That was spooky holy. Who are you?”
“Just me, who you see.” I raised my crinkled-skin, raw hand up to her chin, stroked her jaw softly up to her ear.
She didn’t meet my eyes, cast her own shyly downwards. “Maybe you can’t call it forth because your love is all bottled up inside.”
“Yeah, probably so.” And maybe for the first time ever, I didn’t follow my impulse to kiss a woman whose heat invited me to. I walked over to the window, unsure of how to respond to Valentine. Fouling up with Teresa again had besieged my ability to trust my decisions. Audrey’s anguished desire had torn a hole in my perception of sex, and I didn’t know how to patch it.
I felt empty, like I had nothing of value to offer any woman. Audrey had begged for my body but only if it wrecked havoc on her, and I had responded. Teresa had professed her love, and I always just tucked it away.
And now, this interaction with Valentine was confusing me. She had been acting like I was in her way for weeks.
On the street below, I saw a woman leaning into a car window. I had heard her conversation repeated a hundred times before. Different men. Different women. “Ten bucks.”
“Okay, get in.”
The sleep-with-anybody, free-love party back in New York had turned disastrous for me. Pregnancy. Knifed. My one loving relationship turning into a sunken wreck. Could I forget Teresa? Did I want to?
With Valentine, I was afraid of making another mistake. Who would eventually be hurt? Me, Teresa, Valentine?
The radio in the kitchen sang out to the both of us.
“We’ll do it slow, not worry about a plan
Live life easy, love each other while we can
1-2-3
La-la-la, loving you today
With no worries for tomorrow”
Valentine waited for the song to end, letting its lyrics stir the atmosphere. “What’s the matter, baby? You’re too sad.”
“And you’ve been too mad.”
I watched as a couple of ragged-looking street hustlers, boys about sixteen, jumped out of a car and ran down a side street. The driver of the car, a middle-aged guy in a suit and tie, climbed out of the vehicle, yelling. The stream of traffic behind him began honking as he fumed and railed. I rolled open the window and heard him cursing about the theft of his wallet. The crime repeated itself daily.
“Me, mad?”
“You treat me like I’m invisible, Valentine.”
“This is hard for me. Okay, you want to talk? Then here goes. I’ve never spent any time socially with a white man, and now I’m living with and depending on you. And it’s obvious you don’t know anything about what I have to live through everyday.”
“Like what? Tell me.”
“Like being black in this city, like being a black woman. I get hit on constantly all day. I get on a bus, and guys make suggestions. And sometimes very specific ones. I go into a store, men think I’m in there for them, not to buy something. People offer me money, make comments, think I’m giving it away all day long.” She stretched to cover a nervous pause, then chose to continue. “Then there’s you, not even a casual flirt or compliment. Oh, you’re not cold, you’re sweet, and I see you peeking. Uh, huh, yes, but I don’t think you’re shy, so I say to myself why aren’t those other guys more like you. And then sometimes I’m wishing why aren’t you more like them. There, that’s straight talk, ain’t it?”
“Sorry, I guess I’m wrapped tight. I think you’re pretty.”
“I feel safe with you.”
And Teresa sent me away because she had finally found peace when I wasn’t around.
“You don’t know me. I’m like a walking magnet for trouble. You ever see anybody almost get knifed twice and then run over in less than ten minutes before?”
“You were a white man on a nasty street.”
“It would’ve happened anyway. It does happen anyway. Constantly, like you getting hit on. Well, me too, and these hits are meant to physically damage me or those around me.” I turned and held up my raw hand. “You think this is an accident?”
She looked scared, seemed to shrivel up into herself.
“Or this?” I ripped the neck of my T-shirt aside to reveal the puckered scar from Tweety’s knife. “And look closely at my face.” I pulled tangles of beard aside. “That is a near-death gift from the same woman who opened my shoulder.”
“Don’t shout at me. I didn’t do it. Tell me slowly.”
I was angry, feeling my losses. “It doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to explain.”
“What is?”
“A rifle smashed this cheekbone in, and these aren’t freckles. They’re scars from glass, jungle bites, whatever—I don’t remember.”
“Were you in Vietnam?”
“No. Tomorrow, I could be attacked again.” I turned abruptly away from her, staring at the street below until she tired of my silence and stood to go into her room.
She paused at the door, folded her arms across her chest. “If you find this woman and your child, what’s your plan?”
“Huh? Where’s Thomas?”
“At my mom’s.”
I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window in a thoughtful stream, telling myself I was protecting her. Teresa pinned to the cabin floor, Johnny’s head exploding, Audrey being yanked out of the car.
I heard her breath catch in her throat before she whispered, “You tell me when you know if it’s you or me that’s hanging you up.”
I sighed, too long and too loudly. It’s not you, Valentine.
Whatever the god-war was about, I felt I was on the side getting the worst of it. Life was defeating my dreams, tiring me out with worries I never asked for. I couldn’t hold a pencil to draw. I had just rejected a wonderful woman who was offering herself to me.
I was sick of myself and sick of the battle over the tunnel.
About an hour later, I stepped into her room. She lay in bed, covers pulled up, reading a magazine.
“Are you afraid I’ll abandon you and Thomas if I find Sam and my baby?”
She stared at the same section of a page for a few minutes. “Yes, of course. This neighborhood is all right. But don’t sweat it, I’ll manage.”
“Is that why... you.... well... tonight?
“Spit it out. What are you trying to say?”
“Do you want to sleep with me to live here? Or live here so we can sle
ep together?”
She flipped a page, then another. “Go to hell.”
“Valentine, I wanted you since I first saw you.”
“You got a funny way of showing it.”
“This doesn’t have to be so difficult.”
“It doesn’t even have to be.” She glared briefly at me, jerked the blanket up closer to her neck. “And besides, you’re the one who got all bent out of shape.”
I sat quietly on the side of the bed, measuring what we wanted from each other as she rustled magazine pages for about five minutes, not reading a word, not concentrating on one picture.
“You naked under those covers?”
“I’m furious with you. You must not think much of me.”
“C’mon, turn out the light and let me crawl in there with you.”
“Turn out the light? Why? You don’t want to see you’re with a Negro?”
“No, I’ve slept with...”
“What, what were you going to say?”
“I knew this woman in Philly.”
“No you didn’t. You probably paid for it.”
I didn’t answer.
“Get away from me.”
Tossing and turning on the couch, I may have been half-asleep when the room grew darker. The sense of a presence close by was palpable. Maybe outside stars twinkled across the farthest stretches of the universe, but I saw them all clustered inside a human shape in a corner near my drawing board. It was rippling its wings, letting its snakes hiss. Comets flared across where eyes should have been.
“The path is getting clearer, Deets. It’s coming together.”
My old friend Shadow Creature had come to visit. But this time, it seemed a dream or a quasi-dream.
“You’re changing. The path is accelerating. New ways will open.” A breeze blew in the room. It smelled fresh, like seawater, like pine.
“Why did you have me go public?” I sat up, or it felt like it, but I couldn’t decide if my body had sat up with me.
“To share you.” It swept its hand slightly, and it seemed like the entire formula etched into the wall at Monster Alley sprinkled forth from the shadowy fingertips.
It’s not just teaching me to heal. The Creature understands how the tunnels work.
A dog howling shattered the room. I could see crowds of movement inside the Shadow’s raven aura. Odd shapes, unknown things, people, animals moving through a forest, a mountain reaching to the stars.
“I brought someone you need to hear from.”
My head spun, sinking through a swirl of music, light, and color. Sensual feelings came alive, pulsing in my ears, blurring my vision. Teresa was holding my head in her hands, eyes sparkling like the first time I ever saw her. “I wrote your name into that book, the one about unknown holy men with beards, remember?” I could hear the touch of chimes and soft bell tones in her voice. “Your hand, your wonderful, beautiful hand is damaged. You’re getting hung up in the violence. Don’t torture yourself with thoughts of failure and hopelessness. Allow tenderness into your life again. Release yourself. It won’t hurt you or me. You’ll discover a new wonder.”
Her face darkened until she was part of the shadows in the corner of the room, leaving only the radiance of her eyes where the stars had spun earlier.
I cried out for her, wiped a tear from my eye with my crippled hand.
My mind followed after Teresa, into a place void of thought. Only searing passion lived where I traveled to. Looking to my fingers, I saw they had disappeared, gone to the nothingness of Shadow Creature’s dwelling. But I could still feel them at the end of my arm, plunging into lava, swimming in deep oceans, moving through solids, evaporating and reappearing, shaping themselves into a new incarnation. A flaming golden light danced along the edges of my consciousness, outlining my hand.
I sank back onto the couch, back into the exhausted body lying there. The smells and sounds of the city poked and jarred me, and I slept an uneasy sleep.
Sometime before dawn, I awoke and staggered from the couch to the bathroom. It didn’t register until I opened the door, but the light was on. Valentine stood in front of the sink, drying her hands. She had nothing on.
She didn’t turn to look at me when she said, “Don’t humiliate me. Don’t you ever disrespect me.”
My eyes roamed her body. My cock jumped.
“Didn’t you hear me? Could I have some privacy?” Her eyes cut dangerously in my direction. I took a step closer to her. She dropped her sharp-tempered look quickly to my stiff dick, then turned back to the mirror and closed her eyes.
She stood still, waiting. I could feel the aura of her hunger boiling, and her anger, still alive.
I came up behind and cupped both of her tits, rubbing them, kneading her nipples as I caressed my hardness against her ass and kissed the side of her neck. Her lips parted, breathing heavily as she placed her hands on mine and squeezed.
She opened her eyes and whispered, “You worry too much.”
We soon fell to the floor, then rolled and crawled, pumping and sliding and gasping, into her room. Outside, the sky glowed orange and sirens split the air, seemingly born from the searing fires of our passions and lust.
Around noon, as we both drifted lazily into a worn-out and raw sleep, she sighed happily and then chuckled about how we must have looked like a wild zebra making our way across the floor to her bed.
“A horny zebra.”
“Baby, a scorched, horny zebra.”
My burned hand felt like it was humming. My fingers seemed more pliable. Over the next few days, I proclaimed Valentine’s juices were bringing it back to life and insisted on placing it between her legs every chance I got. She nourished and nurtured it like no medicine could.
Chapter 32
Downstairs, people started to show up at the gallery, asking for the bearded healer, or Jesus, or the angel. Mandrake dismissed them, telling them I was a charlatan.
The phone kept ringing, and after a pilgrimage of six people and a dog gathered in Mandrake’s main showroom asking for blessings, he posted a notice on his front door.
The faith healer lives upstairs. Use the side entrance. Please clean up after your dog.
Strangers began appearing at my door at all hours of the day or night—coughing, wheezing, limping—telling me of their troubles and illnesses. After I had turned away about a dozen people, stuttering and apologizing, telling them I couldn’t do anything for them, Valentine asked, “Why don’t you help those suffering souls?”
“I told you. If I do healings, there’s a good chance people I interact with may suffer or die. I don’t know if it’s a law of the universe or what. I just think that crazy demon in the Cadillac will show up.”
“Is it a price you have to pay to help someone?”
“No, it’s more like he’s tuned into me, and he’s a blustering asshole. The gods are battling, and I guess it’s some kind of repercussion while they figure me out. Who knows? Whatever, it seems perverse and cruel. I’ll never know, but I’m pretty sure if I reached out to heal any of those people, that creep would show up eventually, and you and Thomas could be hurt or killed.”
“What about you? Will he try to kill you?”
I held up my hand. “Not now, but remember the tailpipe?”
“What do you mean, not now? What’s going to happen?”
“He needs me alive, and when he doesn’t any longer, hopefully some of my own buddies will show up to help.”
“Are they angels?”
I thought of Monkey Man. “Ha, ha, no, but they’re rooting on me to survive.”
She pulled me close to her, searching desperately for the answer she didn’t want to hear. “And if Thomas and I weren’t around, you’d be able to help the sick?”
In a flash of understanding, I heard Teresa telling me to release myself.
Had Shadow Creature given me the tools to overcome the brutality of Sheoblask? I had outmaneuvered the demon on the Jersey turnpike with no idea of what I was doing, and now my magic had grown stronger.
Why did you have me go public?
To share you.
Like an unveiling.
Then Teresa came and told me I’d discover a new wonder. Without her message to allow myself some tenderness, I may never have approached Valentine, who’s now questioning my reasons for not reaching out to those in need.
Shadow Creature was sending me a clear message to take the initiative, dedicate myself by trusting my abilities, and not fear Sheoblask.
“I don’t know if I can keep the Cadillac demon from wrecking havoc.”
“Baby, you’d better take your forty days. You need to be alone for awhile. I’m in your way.”
“No, give me another night with you.”
In the morning, I awoke to a vision of white feathers. They lay across Valentine’s breasts, rested softly in her Afro, stuck to dried sticky areas along her thighs.
She tickled my face with a loose feather. “Did you lose your wings last night?”
“I thought they were yours.”
We wondered in astonishment at the scattering of feathers on the bed and floor around us. When we discovered the burst pillow beneath her, we giggled about us being blessed.
But we grew quiet, thinking of what lay ahead.
Making love slowly one last time, she whispered to me not to make any promises to her.
With Thomas hitched up on her hip, we stood together as a bus pulled up, neither of us knowing if we’d see each other again.
A series of flashes in my mind of palm trees, flags, and a row of military-green airplanes led to a black man swinging a duffel bag over his shoulder as he limped across a flat tarmac. He was in uniform, his hopeful eyes gazing at something distant.
I called out to Valentine as she stepped aboard, “Thomas’s father, is he in Vietnam?”
Looking back, she nodded, uncertain why I was broaching the subject then.
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 19